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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON'S MONEY JUNGLE: PROVOCATIVE IN BLUE

The
"Very Special" video is from GRAMMY® Award-winning drummer, composer
and bandleader Terri Lyne Carrington's March shows at Dizzy's Club
Coca-Cola/JALC. Appearing in the video with Carrington are Gerald Clayton and
James Genus. The March shows feature the music of Carrington's Money Jungle:
Provocative in Blue - the 50th anniversary homage to Duke Ellington's iconic
1963 Money Jungle recording. Carrington's album, which reached #1 on the Jazz
Week Charts, is released on Concord Jazz in the U.S., Europe and other global
markets; and, the album is on Universal Music's Somethin' Else label in Japan.

The
September 1962 original recording sessions led by Duke Ellington featured
bassist Charlie Mingus and drummer Max Roach.

Today,
it is considered one of the pivotal jazz recordings of the 1960s; and the 1963
album release that emerged from the session, was - among other things - a
commentary on the perennial tug-of-war between art and commerce. In some ways,
that album's 11 tracks were intended as a sort of counterbalance to the
capitalist bent of the Mad Men generation. Now, 50 years later, this precarious
balance in the world of jazz - or in any art form, for that matter - hasn't
changed much. Terri Lyne Carrington, with the aid of two high-profile
collaborators - keyboardist Clayton and bassist Christian McBride - paid
tribute to Duke, his trio and his creative vision with a cover of that historic
recording.

In
speaking about Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue Carrington reflects,
"Duke's original recording is something that has haunted me since I first
heard it about a decade ago. I had bought it on CD, from the discount bin in a
music store," she recalls. "I put it on in my car, and I immediately
just felt something mysterious about it. There was just an energy that moved
through the tracks. Duke and Charles and Max had a chemistry about them. There
was this tension that you could hear, and yet they fit together like a hand in
a glove."

In
preparation for the project, Carrington read up on Duke's biography. "I
felt like a method actor," she says. "I just dug as deep as I could
in the time that I had to get a glimpse of his perspective on things. When you
start rearranging music by someone like Duke Ellington, you better feel really
good about what you're doing. In the end, I felt confident that I didn't do him
a disservice, because he was a very open-minded artist, and he was very much
about moving forward."

Carrington
considers her Money Jungle - like its predecessor - primarily a trio album, but
she's not averse to some enhancement and additional textures along the way.
Helping out with the rearrangements and reinterpretations is an impressive list
of guest artists: trumpeter Clark Terry, trombonist Robin Eubanks, reed players
Tia Fuller and Antonio Hart, guitarist Nir Felder, percussionist Arturo Stabile
and vocalists Shea Rose and Lizz Wright. In a special appearance, Herbie
Hancock appears in a spoken word segment as the voice of Duke Ellington.

"The
music of Duke's Money Jungle may have first emerged a half-century ago, but
there's nothing old about great music and great musicians," says
Carrington, who sees her own Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue as addressing
some of the same issues as its 1963 predecessor. "There's always something
that's new, if you know how to listen to it. You have to be able to appreciate
the past if you want to have a future. I think that's a big part of our job as
artists and entertainers and educators - to keep reminding the younger
musicians how important our predecessors were - especially the people who made
the music what it is today. So it was my goal to bring some fresh light and
fresh energy to some of Duke's music in general and this recording in
particular."

In
speaking about his and Carrington's partnership with Concord Music, Robert
Hebert, CEO of Hebert-Carrington Media, shares "Terri Lyne and I are very
excited about our relationship with Concord Music ... John (Burk) and Glen
(Barros) ... and their team: Mark Wexler, Jason Linder, Larry Bole, Mike
Wilpizeski, Kajo Paukert, Rick Nuhn, Zak Weil, Evelyn Mowbray and the rest of
the Concord team all have done a great job supporting the Money Jungle:
Provocative in Blue project. And, of course their work on the 2012 GRAMMY®
Award-winning Mosaic Project yielded unforgettable dividends for us all. We are
proud to be counted as a part of the Concord family. They believe in us, and we
in them."

Hebert
continues: "As far as the new relationship with Universal Music in Japan
... Bruce Lundvall and Hitoshi Namekata assisted our company over several years
in putting this together. We look forward to doing much more with Universal
Music Japan, and especially to the opportunity to continue our collaboration
with Ken Arai, Yoshimitsu Harashima, Rutsuko Hanamura and their teams in
Tokyo."

Carrington
has been quite busy of late. In addition to her solo work, she is on a global
tour with her ACS Trio configuration with Geri Allen and Esperanza Spalding.

Looking
ahead to 2014, Hebert-Carrington Media is turning its attention to three major
recordings that have been long-planned: Carrington's next recording project is
the Mosaic Project II follow up, the company's first Brazilian-themed
multimedia project: Alma Brasileira - which it plans to release at the time of
the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, and the Password collaborative with
Carrington, Chris Walker, Frank McComb and Dwight Sill.